, the mockeries, and the reproaches of
a sort hard to bear for a boy of fifteen; that I have been charged with
the want of patriotism, the want of sense, and the want of heart, too;
that I went through agonies of self-conflict and shed secret tears not
a few, and had the beauties of the Furca Pass spoiled for me, and have
been called an "incorrigible Don Quixote," in allusion to the book-born
madness of the knight. For that spoil! They rustle, those bits of
paper--some dozen of them in all. In that faint, ghostly sound there
live the memories of twenty years, the voices of rough men now no
more, the strong voice of the everlasting winds, and the whisper of a
mysterious spell, the murmur of the great sea, which must have somehow
reached my inland cradle and entered my unconscious ear, like that
formula of Mohammedan faith the Mussulman father whispers into the ear
of his new-born infant, making him one of the faithful almost with his
first breath. I do not know whether I have been a good seaman, but I
know I have been a very faithful one. And, after all, there is that
handful of "characters" from various ships to prove that all these years
have not been altogether a dream. There they are, brief, and monotonous
in tone, but as suggestive bits of writing to me as any inspired page to
be found in literature. But then, you see, I have been called romantic.
Well, that can't be helped. But stay. I seem to remember that I have
been called a realist, also. And as that charge, too, can be made out,
let us try to live up to it, at whatever cost, for a change. With this
end in view, I will confide to you coyly, and only because there is
no one about to see my blushes by the light of the midnight lamp, that
these suggestive bits of quarter-deck appreciation, one and all, contain
the words "strictly sober."

Did I overhear a civil murmur, "That's very gratifying, to be sure?"
Well, yes, it is gratifying--thank you. It is at least as gratifying to
be certified sober as to be certified romantic, though such certificates
would not qualify one for the secretaryship of a temperance association
or for the post of official troubadour to some lordly democratic
institution such as the London County Council, for instance. The above
prosaic reflection is put down here only in order to prove the general
sobriety of my judgment in mundane affairs. I make a point of it because
a couple of years ago, a certain short story of mine being published in